Abstract:

This study is aimed at exploring the current situation concerning risk factors and behaviors that
construction workers were facing at both individual and community levels as well as to examine existing
health promotion interventions. This information was expected to be used for constructing useful recommendations
for the development of existing and new interventions employing “social marketing” principles.
Methods: The study began by employing qualitative methods. The research team was assigned to
stay in a purposively selected construction camp for two months to collect data concerning lifestyles,
social values, as well as risk behaviors and risk factors. Afterwards, a cross-sectional survey on issues of
concern was implemented. Finally the data were analyzed and presented to the community representatives
in focus group discussions. This was to verify and investigate explanations underpinning the findings;
moreover, it was expected that such a payback method, including findings, would be beneficial to
people in the communities. Results: It was found that one of the major risk behaviors observed in the
study community was alcohol and tobacco consumption. Although the target group had a number of
constraints in terms of purchasing power and time, they received relatively low payments for these excessive
workloads; however, they were offered convenience and motivation to access alcohol and tobacco
products. It was observed that legal interventions, i.e., restriction on alcohol-selling times did not perform
effectively as the study population usually purchased these unhealthy products from small community
groceries where there was a lack of inspections from police officers; besides, these workers rarely knew
about this regulation. For those who had seen or known about the law, they still did not understand the
reasons behind such a restriction on selling times. Strengthening law enforcement was therefore recommended
by academics as a strategic solution. On the contrary, this study pointed out that the use of social
marketing principles to communicate with the target group regarding the true purposes and relevant
facts of the interventions tended to help increase the effectiveness of legal interventions. Conclusions: In
order to develop suitable health promotion interventions for the target groups, health promoters needed
to understand the context and develop ways to limit their access to unhealthy products. It was recommended
that social marketing should initially be applied for promoting behaviors that are easy and require
low cost to change, such as to stop drinking in certain periods of time. This is to offer reachable
targets to the target group and once they achieve such a goal, they would be empowered to believe in their
abilities, and this would help them to step up to overcome more difficult goals, such as to stop drinking or
smoking altogether. The application of social marketing principles to existing legal interventions could
help facilitate prompt behavior change, as well as maintain desired behaviors in the target populations.